Welcome to the first Stellar Community tutorial For more information about this new category please take a look at this post. This topic is about how to store and send your lumens, here are some top tips:

Don't store your lumens on an exchange

When you buy some lumens, you're more than likely dealing with an exchange so it's always convenient to keep them there which is understandable. The problem is that you're now trusting someone that you shouldn't necessarily trust to hold your coins which can be very dangerous. There have been many crypto exchanges that have been hacked but one of the biggest was the hack of Mt. Gox. Your lumens mightn't be worth too much to you at this moment in time, but that could easily change very soon.

Remember: You don't own your lumens unless you're the one that has access to the private key of that particular address. Get those lumens off the exchange as soon as possible!

Send small amounts first

If you're about to send a good amount to lumens to another address, don't send them all at once. Imagine you want to send 100,000 lumens to another address (could be to a friend, another address that you own etc.). To be extra safe, it's recommended to send a small amount first to that address to make sure you haven't made a mistake. For example, send 20 lumens to the address, then send the remaining 99,980 lumens. This way, if you copied and pasted the wrong address or made any other mistake, you'll lose 20 lumens rather than 100,000

Have a backup of your private key

If you've only got one copy of your private key, you're living dangerously! Always have more than one copy of your private key and make sure that they are safe and secure. It's not much good having your private key on one of your computers and that's it - what would happen if it got stolen or it just stopped working?! If you lose access to your private key you can kiss your lumens goodbye! With crypto you've got more control over your money but at the same time you've got to look after your own stuff because nobody else will

Keep an eye out for hardware wallets

At this moment in time, there aren't any hardware wallets that support lumens, but I'm sure that'll change in the near future. Hardware wallets allow you to safely store your coins without worrying about what will happen if your computer gets a virus for example. One very popular hardware wallet is the nano ledger S but at this moment in time it only supports the likes of bitcoin, ethereum and ripple - but again, they keep adding more and more cryptocurrenies so hopefully stellar is on the roadmap

Don't tell people how many lumens you have

I noticed there's a thread on here asking people how many lumens you own - this seems fine at first but you could potentially make yourself a target by telling people this. If one person owns 100 lumens and another owns 100,000 lumens - who do you think a hacker would rather try go for!? At the moment you might think "Nobody will try hack me since I own so little" but in a couple of years those lumens could be worth a lot of money and now everyone knows how much you own. Sometimes you're better off keeping some things to yourself

And that's it! Hopefully you've learned a thing or two after reading this first tutorial Again, if you want to write up a tutorial to share with the Stellar Community get in touch with me

Great tips indeed!! Its def good to remember not to move any crypto all at once- to be sure that the transaction will be a success. Scary to transfer coins then not see them anywhere for a while!! $$$$$$

After some research I am guessing that my safest option to save lumens is to send them to the centaurus wallet and make sure my phone doesn't get hacked. If I am missing something or you have a better idea, let me know!

Jamie, there's a major problem with sending and storing Lumens with the stellar address GCO2IP3MJNUOKS4PUDI4C7LGGMQDJGXG3COYX3WSB4HHNAHKYV5YL3VC has been scamming massively. It shows almost every minute activity on the ledger and its XLM balance is 516,455,971 recently. This stellar address is appearing on Binance XLM withdrawals where it shows redirected to them, stealing. PLEASE HELP to stop this as many of us are being taken and others don't know where their XLMs are disappearing because they aren't checking their Txid details with this scammer address.Thanks

Hi, i am New to community and Cryto in general and this was one of the first transactioin i made from a exchange, I had bought stellar about 2 weeks ago and used that stellar account viewer to Generate a Private Key and then wrote down private key sent lumens to the public key 432 lumens from Poloniex i thought i did everything correct, then i went to try and view them in there and says invalid private key. Tried everthing , i think missing 2 letters or number in key somehow , then used the stellarexpert to put my public key address and they are there , can these be recovered or is my private key in the file idk im really new to all this and learning , any help appreciated , stellar has 4x since i bought so now getting more and more eager to fix lol

@Beantownsbest i also have the same problem. it seems that is because the stellar address you just generated is not yet existed in the stellar networks (you can check it at the stellar account viewer). To activate the account we need to have at least 20 xlm in it. However, many exchanges will not recognize these brand-new-account so that we can't transfer our xlm from exchanges directly to our address.The solution is to ask your friend or someone which has connected to the stellar networks to send you at least 20.1 xlm, or you can buy from site that support transfer to brand new address.Btw, does anyone know where to buy / which sites support transfer to brand new stellar address? because i dont have friends who had xlm any help would be appreciated!

Thanks for this info. I do have some other questions: I transferred lumens from an exchange 'onto the network' via https://www.stellar.org/account-viewer/ and I can see that they are there. But I'm not sure that was even the right thing to do. Is that any safer than leaving them on an exchange?

I'm having difficulty finding any basic info about this. Is there a way to just store lumens in a paper wallet? Or should I download one of the software wallets and use that instead of leaving lumens on the network? I don't understand the purpose of having lumens on the network.

Could somebody please clarify this (the relationship between exchanges, the stellar network on stellar.org/account-viewer and wallets)? I would greatly appreciate a clear explanation, as I am feeling a bit uncertain and not secure at the moment, and I know at least 3 other people who are feeling the same. Thank you.